Their children attend Cleveland public schools. They call out bad teachers and fight for good ones. They try to engage absent school parents rather than bash them. They recognize the failed promises of past superintendents but have faith in school chief Eric Gordon.

Erin and Anne are a part of the campaign's strategy to talk to parents of Cleveland school kids. Last Thursday, Erin, who is a paid organizer on the campaign and whose children attend Tremont Montessori, reserved a room at the Gunning Recreation Center on Cleveland's far West Side. She brought cookies and grapes and a flip chart. Anne, who is a volunteer and has children at the district's nearby Valley View Boys Leadership Academy, came to back up Erin.

Exactly one set of parents showed up, Charles and Serena Jacobs, who have four children in district schools.

I was the only other person in the room.

I wasn't surprised by the turnout. Before the meeting, I drove the side streets off of Lorain and Puritas avenues and Rocky River Drive on the city's southwest side. I was looking for yard signs supporting the levy, known as Issue 107. The campaign has distributed 5,000 blue-and-orange signs so far. I found just one. It was planted in the West Park yard of Mike Foley, a state legislator.

The West Side has never been friendly to Cleveland school levies compared with the city's East Side, where property values are lower and residents are predominately black. In some past campaigns to pass school levies, organizers focused on East Side voters, figuring they were wasting time and money if they tried to court West Side votes.

If voters pass the 15-mill school levy on Nov. 6, the owner of the average-priced home – pegged at about $64,000 --- will pay $294 more a year, though the tax expires in four years. West Side homes tend to cost more than the average home, so their owners will pay more, which is one reason for the resistance out there.

Erin and Anne's job is to focus on how the money will be spent and address skepticism toward academic change.

Charles was already on board. Serena had doubts.

"As a mom with a high-schooler, I feel like I have been told all this before," she said.

Erin and Anne talked to Charles and Serena for nearly 90 minutes. They talked about the district's plans to build on success of its specialty schools, such as those their children attend. They explained how parents will have more influence over their neighborhood schools and high-performing schools will have autonomy to try things such as a longer school year. They talked about efforts to recruit the best and brightest teachers when a wave of retirements hit in a few years.

They didn't over-promise, noting that it will take some time to shrink the class size and not every student will get electronic school books. But new textbooks would come.

"George H.W. is still president in some of our textbooks," Erin said, referring to the country's 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush.

As the meeting went on, Serena said some of her neighbors, who do not have kids, do not support the levy request.

Anne responded, gently arguing that we all benefit if our neighbors' kids receive a better education.

"It helps a neighborhood overall because we still have to live with these kids in the neighborhood," she said.

It was an interesting point. Typically, we just argue good schools improve everyone's property values.

But we can't really have the discussion if nobody shows up to talk about it. Throughout the meeting, I kept thinking about how to get more people out. The campaign should have promoted the meeting as a family event. The kids could have played in the recreation center while the parents listened. Why do you think charter schools rent bouncy houses and carnival rides when they want to sign up new parents?

I called the campaign leaders to ask about the campaign's progress, particularly on the West Side, where Cleveland City Council members support the tax increase.

Campaign consultant Arnold Pinkney says the campaign is a tough sell on the West Side.

"We are running into the same problems on West Side, and the further west and southwest we go, the more of a problem it is," he said. "But we are going into those areas because any percentage of vote we get helps."

The campaign airs commercials on cable television and radio. It mails literature to frequent voters. The campaign's mobilization efforts – the push to register voters and get them to the polls – focuses on the East Side.

The campaign lined up endorsements, including that of former U.S. Sen. and Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich, who lives in the city's Collinwood neighborhood and could blunt the opposition from neighborhood City Councilman Mike Polensek, who opposes the levy. (I predict Polensek's voice will prevail in that pocket of the city.) Bishop Richard Lennon of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland has also endorsed the levy.

The campaign also organized Baptists pastors and ministers, most of whom run churches on the city's East Side. More than 100 church leaders from the area turned out for a rally last week, when they posed for a group photo that will be used in campaign literature. Pinkney said the event drew clergy from across the city, including Hispanic and white church leaders.

The campaign, which has raised more than $1 million for its efforts, will win if it can earn more than 65 percent of the vote on city's East Side. The campaign's tracking poll shows support growing for the tax increase.

But the campaign and the school district shouldn't miss the opportunity to engage West Side parents like Serena, who left her meeting planning to vote for the levy.

Article was updated to correct Mike Foley's title, who is a state legislator, not former councilman.

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